


get right under the skin

by owltrocious



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Drugged Sex, Erotic Violence, Group Sex, Kink, M/M, Multi, Public Sex, Rough Sex, negotiation, the dream pack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 14:42:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7622641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owltrocious/pseuds/owltrocious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sons of immigrants and immigrant sons: Joseph Kavinsky collected them, one at a time, let them collect each other under his aegis. </p><p>[Or: Kavinsky gathers his pack, using the tools at his disposal.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	get right under the skin

**  
**

**Prologue**.

The sons of immigrants and immigrant sons: Joseph Kavinsky collected them, one at a time, let them collect each other under his aegis. He'd shown up two weeks late into his freshman term at Aglionby, skinny and raw-boned but feral like a street dog—no one's mark, from the first—and immediately driven out two dorm mates. The third, sophomore Maksym Prokopenko, stuck. It had been a last-ditch effort on the part of the administration; they'd hoped it would be like putting two sharks in the same pool. They'd eat each other or get companionable.

Prokopenko had taken one look at Kavinsky's full mouth, his black-scabbed knuckles, and the filthy grease-stained snapback hiding his eyes, and _smiled_. "Prokopenko," he'd said.

"Ukrainian," Kavinsky replied. His eyebrows climbed a little. "Joseph Kavinsky."

"Bulgarian, I hear," Proko responded in kind.

He tossed his duffel bag on the floor and walked across the dorm, loomed over the far shorter boy—Kavinsky had gained a few inches since then, but Proko was an early bloomer—and made to put his hands on his shoulders. Kavinsky's smile went brighter and Proko heard the quiet _swish-click_ before the point of the knife sank the barest millimeter into the soft skin under his bottom rib through his shirt. He froze.

"Thoughts, questions, concerns?" Kavinsky said.

Proko leaned into it, breath catching despite himself—it was a small knife, and his shirt would keep it from doing damage unless his new roommate meant it to, but _still_ —and hooked one arm around Kavinsky's shoulders. He leaned their foreheads together, staring eye to eye. He said, "I've been looking for something to fill my time."

Kavinsky stepped back and thumbed the knife closed, a wicked little black-steel number with an axis-lock. "Good," he said. "I've got plans." 

*

One week later, Prokopenko sought out the senior on the crew team who'd shoved Kavinsky on the quad and elbowed him in the mouth when Kavinsky had wheeled on him snarling like an animal. Proko waited outside of the boy's car, forced him into it, drove them to a patch of gravel shoulder on the outskirts of Henrietta, and then beat him casually and methodically until he begged. He took a picture with his cell phone and meandered back to Aglionby, where Kavinsky was waiting sitting in the windowsill with his split lip and bruised jaw.

He showed the other boy the picture. Fifteen year old Joseph smiled so wide his lip bled down his chin. "Good dog," he said.

"Woof," Proko replied, half-joking.

*

Two weeks later, Prokopenko held one of Kavinsky's bare narrow feet in his hand and mouthed at the abrupt bone of his ankle, the taut line of his Achilles tendon. He was curled up on the floor at the end of the bed, one hand in his pants while the other boy watched him, chin tilted, still wearing his uniform as slovenly as possible. He shuddered.

"Let me," he said.

"Beg me," Kavinsky replied.

Proko came in his hand with a soft huff, stricken, thinking, _he's the one_. "Please," he murmured. He kept his head bowed. "Please, K."

"Fine," Kavinsky replied.

There was never a question who had the upper hand. Proko closed his eyes and followed the hands in his hair to kneel, to open his mouth, to lose himself in salt and sweat and musk. Kavinsky murmured to him throughout, as if he knew, as if he could peel Prokopenko down to his bones already and was choosing instead to fuck his mouth with tender force. And when Proko later watched his king wake clutching a pair of blinding white Gucci shades in his loose fist, he thought, _plans_.

*

The summer Prokopenko turned seventeen, he woke one afternoon in a _universe_ of pain. The first breath seared in his lungs and came out broken. The world swam. His joints ached and his skin throbbed; his eyes were sandpaper. Kavinsky laughed like a hyena and jerked his chin up, dragging lines on his skin in the process. Proko, speechless, saw his hollow cheeks and bruise-dark eyes, bloodied mouth, a hideous burn blistered across the side of his neck.

"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck," Kavinsky muttered under his breath, eyes searching Proko's face. "Talk to me, say something, _now_ —"

"K," he whispered. It hurt. He swallowed. "Where am I?"

There was an eerie blank in his head around glass-edged pieces of memory: going to Jersey for the break, Kavinsky's father, Kavinsky's father hauling off and backhanding his son like it was absolutely normal dinner table behavior. Proko thought he must have done something stupid.

"Okay, well," Kavinsky was still laughing, hysterical. "This is a dream, okay? This is the inside of my head, and you're dead. So's my dad, thanks for the fucking favor."

"I feel dead," he tried to joke.

Kavinsky slapped him, which opened up a black hole of agony in his jaw. He couldn't even make a sound for a moment until a whimper heaved out of him. Kavinsky said, "Sorry, I—fuck it. I'm going to bring you back, this place is okay for that, it knows you," he carried on.

"Am I a ghost?" Proko asked. "It hurts too much."

"You're maybe something like a ghost," Kavinsky said. "I don't think I'm just making you up."

Proko half-saw trees, massive and spindly and looming. But mostly, he saw Kavinsky, and knew to his bones that he had damaged something between them with this, with the betrayal of dying. But he felt like himself, here. "I remember things."

"Okay," Kavinsky said. He looked up from Proko at the forest, bared his teeth. "Give him back to me. You can't keep him. He doesn't belong here. I'm taking him."

It was like being punched in the face. Proko blacked out again. When he came to he was in Kavinsky's bed in the Jersey house, Kavinsky lying next to him still rigid with sleep and misery. He thought, _are there bodies, is there_ my _body, this is so fucked up_. His hands were cold; even his blood felt cold. He rolled sideways, hissing through his teeth at the pain still eating him from the inside out. Kavinsky woke up with a mouth on his mouth and hands around his throat.

He didn't say a word about the wet hacking that Kavinsky did instead of crying, let shaking fists slam against his back and ribs and thighs. He buried his face in Kavinsky's neck and waited for him to fight it out. His skin was two sizes too small, or his brain, or his memories. He didn't think it was healthy to know he'd been— _dreamed_ , dreamed back to life, put back together from a dead boy's mind and a living boy's rage. Once Kavinsky tired himself out, he pushed up onto his hands and knees, stuck his fingers in the smaller boy's mouth, and watched K's expression change.

Proko grabbed his thigh hard and pulled it up, spreading his legs to slot between them, trembling with exhaustion and rebirth but needing to put himself back together. There was a controlled violence to his movements, because he realized he was fucking _angry_ , he was seventeen and zero and dead and alive. He pinched Kavinsky's bottom lip between his thumb and fingernail so hard it split and K reached up to grip the headboard.

Proko thought he would shake apart before he could do anything else, but eventually he got Kavinsky's pants off and his hips pinned and three spit-wet fingers dragging inside him. Kavinsky took it without complaint, making desperate bitten-off noises, his dick half-hard and persistently dripping while Proko fucked him with broad fingers as deep as he could reach. Finally Kavinsky's body locked up around him and his heels kicked, a small rough gasp tearing from his mouth. He came on his own hip and stomach—not much, but there, reduced to his component parts. Proko crammed his fingers back in to the knuckle and felt that tight clutching muscle give way around him again, wondered if this hurt, if Kavinsky wanted it to hurt.

"When we're back," Proko snarled, "when we're back I'm going to hold you down and fuck you til you beg me to stop."

"Yes," Kavinsky ground out. " _Proko_ —"

There was so much hideous relief and something Prokopenko did not want to name in the other boy's voice that he slipped his fingers free and rolled away from Kavinsky to wrap his arms around his own stomach. Seventeen and dead, but alive—he wasn't sure who to blame or thank.

*

It was August before equilibrium settled in. Kavinsky's reign had been briefly and brutally upended on their return from the catastrophic break. Prokopenko spent two weeks asking permission for nothing, working through the gnawing terror and anger in his guts, and he'd left three wounds that he thought would scar—one with the pocket knife Kavinsky had brandished on him at their first meeting—along with a host of lesser transgressions. It would have been unthinkable to him, before the incident, but after, it was atonement. The tension eased as the heat of summer built, until one morning, Kavinsky prodded at the scabbing, bruised bite-marks on his thigh said, "Enough. This doesn't happen again."

"Okay," Proko agreed. "I'm done."

"Prove it," Kavinsky said.

He dropped to his knees at the end of Kavinsky's bed.

 

 **1**.

 

"That one," Kavinsky said. 

Prokopenko followed his gesture to the bowed, glossy-dark head of Fai Jiang. The other boy sat two rows up in mathematics. In the four weeks since the term had begun, Kavinsky had heard him speak precisely twice. At the moment, he was asleep at his desk. If he wasn't staring blankly at the antics of his student cohort, arrogant and stunningly beautiful, he was sleeping; if he wasn't doing either of those, he wasn't in classes at all. Kavinsky understood that.

"He's quiet," Prokopenko murmured.

"He's miserable," Kavinsky corrected. "He has no friends. He's got _abandoned kid_ written all over him."

"And that _mouth,_ " Proko added.

Kavinsky made a noncommittal noise and a note to himself to find out who Jiang's roommate was, force the boy to bring him to a party. There was a look about him, like he needed a strong hand on the back of his neck and a voice whispering in his ear—like without it he'd shatter. Kavinsky glanced at Prokopenko, his well-leashed dog, and thought he'd have the necessary skills.

*

Except it was Proko, at the first house party, whom Jiang gravitated to—Proko who made him his drinks, Proko who offered him a blunt, Proko who laughed with him and elbowed him and began to roughhouse so carefully when Jiang shoved him back. Kavinsky watched Jiang's quicksilver smile and the ease with which, finally, he went loose and limp: only after he'd been wrestled to the carpet with other boys catcalling his loss and Prokopenko sitting on his back mashing his face into the floor.

He didn't approach Kavinsky until the second invitation, and he was skittish about it, but eventually he settled on the couch as raucous noise spilled all around them. Kavinsky kicked his legs across Jiang's lap to trap him and smirked over his shades, said, "Tell me about yourself, pretty-boy."

*

Jiang staggered against the side of the Mistubishi, the dirty pulse of the speakers vibrating his insides, and fumbled to open the door to the backseat. It was locked. He groaned and collapsed to his knees in slow-motion, sliding down the paint. His stomach heaved. His mouth watered sickly. This was the third party of Kavinsky's he'd been to—the first two had been house parties, but this was an entirely separate affair, brisk fall night and a dusty sprawl of field packed with screams and music and wildness.

He was _wrecked_.

Prokopenko had mixed his drinks. Kavinsky had watched. He'd let it happen. His father had abandoned him at Aglionby without so much as a goodbye, and there was no one else to give a shit what Jiang did with his time. He had the right to stop eating, stop showering, stop getting out of his filthy sheets, stop going to class; he had the right to stop _being_ , if he wanted.

"Pretty-boy, are you dying?" Prokopenko said from above him.

"Bitch, I might be," Jiang tried to respond but the syllables tangled on his tongue.

Hands hooked under his armpits. Proko lifted and draped him against the side of the car. He let his head loll back, nose pressed to the underside of the other boy's chin, and laughed. His skin sparked and his nerves fizzed at the delightful touch of skin and stubble.

"Kavinsky," Proko called out.

"Yeah?" he hollered back, distant but coming closer.

"I think we broke him."

Jiang twisted in Proko's arms to bite at his jawline, humming under his breath, knees liquid. It was the most alive he'd felt in weeks. He didn't care if it was equal parts blistering disorientation, sick stomach, and delirious helpless need. He didn't think he could manage to get a hard-on. It didn't seem to matter.

"Look at that," Kavinsky said. "Let me—"

An elbow jostled him and Kavinsky slipped between his body and the car, another set of arms around his waist. He smiled at Kavinsky and kissed him. That vulgar mouth moved under his, wet-hot and slick. He whimpered at the sensation. Prokopenko's breathing changed, a little heavier, and he pushed his hips forward to grind the pile of them together.

"Fuck, yeah," Jiang moaned.

Kavinsky laughed and wriggled out from under him. "Later," he said.

Jiang blinked. Kavinsky unlocked the car and Proko shoved him into the backseat. His legs hung out, heels scuffing in dirt. He stretched and pushed his hands against the closed door on the other side.

"Don't puke in the car," Proko said.

"Not gonna fuck me?" Jiang asked.

Kavinsky scrubbed a hand over his mouth and cut a look at Proko. It was all heat. Proko shrugged. "Think he'll be all right with it later, if you do it now?"

"We'll wait," Kavinsky said. "I want him to _remember_ it."

But he leaned into the backseat and shoved Jiang's shirt up, opened his belt buckle. Jiang shimmied his hips and Kavinsky snorted, unzipping him and tugging the jeans half-off. Jiang looked down the length of his own body: tawny skin, narrow hips, the black of his boxer-briefs bared with a stripe of thigh showing between them and his jeans. Kavinsky took out his phone and snapped a photo.

"Rest up," he said.

The pair disappeared, leaving Jiang half-undressed and absolutely fucked up. The party flowed on around him, a cocoon of music and cold air on hot skin. Jiang, unceremoniously, passed out.

He came around to quiet, pitch-dark, and the rocking of the car. His stomach rolled but he managed not to throw up, swallowing one-two-three times. From outside, he heard the slap of skin on skin and Kavinsky's low groan, Proko's rhythmic soft grunts. Jiang's whole body flared all at once, so frantic he curled in on himself, shoving a hand into his underwear. He remembered, in glittering fragments, asking them to fuck him. It seemed like he'd slept through the start of that.

He cupped himself in his palm. The constant creaking shift of the car, the cold air on his goosebump-prickled skin, and the obscene soft noises stacked sensation on top of him like weight. Though his prick was slow to respond, the inside of his head was awash with pleasure and arousal. He suspected, on the tail end of it, that at least one of the drinks—if not all of them—had been laced. He rubbed and squeezed and played his fingertips over himself until he had enough of an erection to grasp, then heard Kavinsky say, " _Fuck_ , Proko, I can't—"

There was a scuffle and the cracking sound of a palm colliding with someone's flesh. One slow groan: also Kavinsky. Jiang swallowed, dry-mouthed, and restrained himself from looking. Proko snarled, "If you aren't going to get off, you're not going to keep fucking me."

A pause. "Come on then," Kavinsky replied. He sounded breathless. "I'll take it, just get _in_ me."

Jiang _whimpered_. The sudden silence that followed froze him head to toe.

Proko rounded the bumper of the car, naked from the waist down. Jiang met his eyes, bleary, hand unmistakably in his underwear. Kavinsky began to laugh. The door behind Jiang's head opened as well and he tilted his chin back to look. Kavinsky's pants hung low on his hips, his still-wet dick glistening in the ambient light, so hard he was almost flat up against his own stomach even standing. Jiang shuddered.

"Pretty-boy," Proko murmured at his feet, except he couldn't take his eyes off of Kavinsky, casually stroking himself with a vicious smile on his face. "Sober on a scale of one to ten?"

"Enough," Jiang croaked.

"Enough to change our plans?" Kavinsky said.

"What," Jiang started to ask. His words died in his throat, though, when Prokopenko grabbed his jeans and jerked, spilling him further out of the car and getting them down around his ankles. Proko propped his legs against his chest, wrapped one arm around his thighs just above his knees, and worked his underwear off as well.

"Remember begging us, a couple hours ago?" he asked conversationally, pushing his dick in a shocking hot slide against the back of Jiang's thigh. "We were nice to let you sleep it off a little first, weren't we."

Jiang managed an affirmative noise. He felt small under Proko's hands, Kavinsky's invasive gaze, and their doubled attention. The coursing euphoria lighting patterns beneath his nerves helped; it made him languid and aching and eager at turns, each touch magnified into a startling spasm of pleasure.

"I don't—" he began, glancing at Kavinsky, skin hot and voice cracking. "I don't want to suck your dick right now."

"Squeamish," Kavinsky laughed. Proko did as well, but he followed up:

"Well, get ready for a long fucking ride then. K's probably put half a grand of coke up his nose tonight, and he's going to wear your ass out. Blowing him would've been faster."

After a brief, heated bout of hands shoving and bodies trading places, Jiang found himself half-lying in the backseat on his front, pants and underwear around one ankle and a shoe lost to the field. Kavinsky stood between his legs with a thumb teasing and tugging at him. Proko sat in the center of the bench seat, Jiang's hands on his thighs. He painted the head of his cock across Jiang's mouth, a slippery musk-tasting slide, one hand in his hair to make him wait for it. Jiang would've struggled, but his attention was still fractured and his muscles loose and shivering. The real answer to the question—one to ten—had gone from _eleven_ down to perhaps _eight_ , but he was still a mess of nerves and desire more than cogent thought.

"I'm letting you do this," he muttered.

"We know," Proko said.

Kavinsky's thumb slipped inside him before he could respond, damp with spit but a dragging push—not as slick as he'd prefer. He groaned, flinching. The other boy tugged, testing, then bent and licked around his finger. Jiang closed his eyes, mouth hanging open, while Kavinsky worked his tongue inside. The wriggling intense heat, the silk-smooth inner flesh of Kavinsky's lips, the brute push of knuckles against his hole, Jiang let it wash over him.

"Jesus, if this is how tight you are when you're rolling, I can't fucking imagine getting in your ass while you're sober," Kavinsky said. "Ease up."

"Here," Proko said. The grip in his hair softened and he gratefully slid his mouth down the thick heat of his cock. He groaned around the stretch in his jaw, the weight on his tongue. "K, there's stuff in the glove box."

"Get it," Kavinsky growled.

Proko shifted and leaned into the front, scrabbling with something while Jiang fought to keep him in his mouth. He figured it out a moment later when Kavinsky poured cold oil over his hand and Jiang's ass, messy and imprecise, then immediately tucked his first finger against his thumb and forced them both in.

"Fuck," Jiang yelped, letting Proko slip from his mouth.

"Tell him if he hurts you," Proko said.

"No, it's good, it's—" Kavinsky spread his fingers and Jiang's hips jerked, the dull burn of it licking up his spine. "I don't like fingers, I want—"

Kavinsky let out a theatrical, excited groan. He didn't make him ask; he just nudged the bare head of his dick against his spread fingers, slid one out and the other _in_ with a sudden push. Jiang cried out, the slip of the oil and the strength of Kavinsky's thrust giving him no ground to escape. He bucked, into it or away, overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment, another person inside him, the broad deep stretch of Kavinsky's dick a sweet ache that drove the breath from his body. "Please please _please_ —"

Kavinsky understood, hands on his hips to jerk him back onto the next thrust. Jiang went limp, whining into Proko's thigh, fingertips digging in until Proko took his wrists in one grip and lifted his arms. _This_ was how he wanted it: hanging between their hands, Kavinsky fucking him mercilessly, slamming in deep at the apex of each thrust. The inside of his head was _noise_ , shocked arousal, blurring colors and smells and amplified sensation.

"Make him come," Proko murmured. "Come on, K, look at him, he's so good."

"Yeah," Kavinsky responded, panting.

Proko's words were more for Kavinsky than him, but he listened, flexing and shuddering. "He deserves it, he took everything you gave him, didn't he? He hasn't told you no, don't make him regret that. He let us get him fucked up and he's letting you _fuck_ him up."

Kavinsky made a fierce sound. A hand in Jiang's hair yanked his head back. He cried out again, brief and loud, the angle suddenly too-far and too-hard as the pair of them leveraged him up so his weight dragged him down onto the punishing force of Kavinsky's hips. He'd never let another person in him this far, this rough. He struggled without giving his body permission to do so, all movement and no thought, brief guttural moans caught in the back of his throat. Proko came up on his knees and switched his grip to both hands. His arms strained with the effort of keeping Jiang in position.

"Good boy," Kavinsky rasped, sounding almost as broken-open as Jiang felt.

He ground in one last time and held there, as far as he could go. Jiang felt him pulsing, knew Kavinsky was coming inside him, and fought harder. He was still so turned on, so ready for it, and it was over—

"Proko," Kavinsky hissed, "Finish him up, come on, he's loose enough."

Jiang collapsed in a heap when Proko dropped him to climb over his back. Kavinsky pulled out with a lewd sound but he had barely a moment to respond before Proko was taking his place. He appreciated for one second that Prokopenko was taller, stronger, could just _lift_ him by his thighs to the right position.

"Fuck you're _big_ ," Jiang bit out, and then Proko stopped holding back.

Jiang stuffed his fingers into his own mouth and screamed. Proko had been going shallow, but he wasn't any longer; there was no chance he could have fucked him first and had it be anything other than pain—even with as much as Kavinsky had done, it ached. Kavinsky crouched next to them and took Jiang's dick in his hand, squeezing and stroking.

"Don't disappoint us," Kavinsky said into his ear, plastered against his side. "Proko won't finish until you, and I don't think you can keep taking him for long. Look at your _face_. Proko, you're fucking ruining him, he _loves_ it."

"God, yeah," Proko groaned.

The scale tipped for Jiang when Kavinsky bit a messy kiss onto the curve of his bicep, strange and intimate, and then the slick pull of his hand and the brutal intensity of Proko's fucking were exactly enough. He spasmed with the power of his orgasm, muffling wet gasps against the crook of his arm as he shuddered through it. Proko pulled out of him, mercifully, and then he felt hot stripes of come on his ass and thighs.

"Oh," he managed, shivering head to toe.

"Good work," Kavinsky murmured, carding a hand through his hair.

"He's a mess," Proko said. Fingers smeared through the come and spit and oil between his legs. His nerves sparked again and colors shifted behind his eyelids. He half-considered asking to have them fuck him again while he felt wet and open, fingers if nothing else. The burning heat of his skin consumed all of his rational impulses. He felt like he could go all night, except he couldn't move an inch, sapped and wrung out. "Let's take him home."

Kavinsky let Prokopenko drive so he could cradle Jiang's head in his hands and stare into his eyes, smiling, all edges and surety. "There's no going back," he said quietly.

"I know," Jiang murmured.

 

**2.**

 

Kavinsky picked Skov out before Prokopenko or Jiang understood it was going to happen. His elegance was alarming and his lack of deference charming—but he seemed too aloof for the three-bodied animal that their group had become. Kavinsky knew that was the answer his boys would give if he asked for their opinion, so he didn't. Instead, he watched. Skov had precisely one friend, the viciously intelligent and implacable Swan, and the rest of Aglionby he dismissed with a hand scrubbed through the bleached-white mane of hair curling around his cheekbones.

He also had a scar behind his right ear, visible in the line it drew through the bristle of his undercut, and his hands were always taped across the bridge and around each second knuckle. It was not a fashion statement. Kavinsky half-fell into the hall bathroom one morning, head pounding and hands shaking— _it wasn't withdrawal if he didn't stop_ —and saw him cleaning the open bloody wounds in the sink. Skov eyed him, flexed one fist.

Kavinsky held up his own hands in response, the backs to the other young man, and let him see the discolored scars. "Some hobbies, right," he ground out, before he had to stagger into a stall to throw up.

He heard the door shut a moment later and closed his eyes, leaning his forehead on the wall. It wasn't the most auspicious start—he'd met both Jiang and Prokopenko from a position of unshakable dominance—but Skov had that caged-animal look in his eyes.

He didn't need a leader so much as he needed someone to open the gate.

*

Skov looked up from his phone to see Joseph Kavinsky standing in front of him on the steps. His thumbs were tucked in his belt-loops, tugging his uniform trousers down enough to bare a white firm line of stomach and hip framed by his unfastened button-up. It was surprisingly lurid for a sunny October afternoon.

"Come with us tonight," he said, indicating over his shoulder with a jerk of his chin. Skov glanced around him to see the mismatched pair of small, handsome Jiang lingering next to tall, rough-edged Prokopenko.

"Reason?" Skov asked.

Kavinsky bent into his space, put a hand over the screen of his phone. Skov tensed. "Trust me."

"Should I tell Swan I'm going to be with you?" he said.

"As long as he doesn't hold your leash," Kavinsky replied with a knife-edged grin.

Skov snorted, met his stare. "As if."

He let Kavinsky take his phone and program a number into it, then tucked it in his pocket when the other boy strolled off to rejoin his—lackies, though Skov wished he had a better word for it. The sight of Kavinsky slinging his arms over both of their shoulders and crowding them in close to walk with him in an uneven beastly stumble made a definitive heat twist under his skin. There were rumors. Jiang's roommate half-complained and half-bragged that his dorm partner was never home, but once he'd come back and found the door barricaded shut and heard him getting, if Skov remembered correctly, "fucked all to hell" by his companions.

It was Aglionby, so he felt hard-pressed to believe suggestive gossip about the second-strangest and most-dangerous clique on the campus. Except he wasn't stupid, and he'd been watching Kavinsky watch him, and he also hadn't missed that sometimes there were finger-shaped bruises around the back of Prokopenko's neck creeping above his collar that matched with an awful specificity the size of the other boy's hands. And Jiang was pretty, the butt of half the fag jokes Skov wondered if people realized he heard, but he was also and obviously the kind of unhinged and willful that came from serious abandonment issues. Jiang wouldn't put up with something less than absolute certainty in his companions, and he _hadn't_ before Kavinsky and Prokopenko. He pictured it: Prokopenko broad and built enough to hold Jiang up between them, hands hooked under his thighs to spread him; Kavinsky vicious enough to fuck him hard while he couldn't fight back; Jiang begging and helpless. All parts of the equation got him going.

He texted Swan, "Tonight's going to be interesting. Going out with Kavinsky."

"Okay," was the response.

*

Skov arrived at the field to find a small ring of cars with their lights on and Kavinsky's personal cheerleading squad pressed thigh-to-thigh on the hood of his Mitsubishi. He let his car coast to a stop in the open space. Music rolled from the Supra, molten and furious, turned just loud enough to keep the night on edge. His heart pounded. He'd expected—more people, perhaps.

Kavinsky strolled to the center of the ring of lights as Skov climbed out. He had a bottle in his loose grip. Though the air was crisp, he wore only a white tank and painted-on black jeans. He'd lost the shades. His eyes were burning, dark. Swan had agreed to wait up at the dorm, but he had no interest in participating; this was Skov's game. So Skov stepped forward, wordless, and held his hand out. Kavinsky put the bottle in it and let him take a swig. There was whiskey and—he grimaced. Chalk-dust chemical-burn aftertaste. He should've guessed.

"Hit me," Kavinsky said.

Jiang snorted. "Brad Pitt knockoff," he muttered.

Skov wasn't laughing. He looked over at Prokopenko and Jiang, who had tangled themselves tighter on the hood of the car since he'd driven up. There was a messy, toothy bruise on Jiang's already-dark skin at the hollow of his throat. That answered that, then. He crossed in front of Kavinsky, the back of his neck prickling, and handed over the bottle. Prokopenko took it with a nod, fed Jiang a swig and took one for himself. A fuse lit in Skov's stomach at the sight of their wet mouths and dilated pupils.

He shrugged out of his jacket, balled it up, and threw it on the ground. After a moment's consideration, he stripped off his t-shirt as well, took out his gauges—small but enough to be pulled out if he was careless—and handed them to Jiang. Kavinsky watched, practically vibrating, and Skov knew he'd been in fights before. Skov didn't know if he'd fought like this. He wondered if Kavinsky had a fucking clue what _like this_ meant.

He smiled like a shark. "Take your shirt off, if you don't want to ruin it."

Kavinsky shrugged and pulled it off. His ribs were bony in the harsh headlight glow. Skov swallowed, blazingly interested in the appearance of fragility, the thought of breaking it under his hands. There was a long looping scar, still fresh-pink, wrapped around the top of Kavinsky's hip bone: knife wound.

"It stops when someone stops it," Skov said.

"All right," Kavinsky agreed. He bounced on his heels, twice, lifted his hands in a loose stance, southpaw dominant.

Skov laughed and moved fast, one minute tracking Kavinsky's tight shoulders and relaxed footwork the next barreling into him at the knees. He took Kavinsky down hard, flipping his light frame over his back and slamming him into the dirt. If Kavinsky had had a goddamn clue, he could've gotten his arm around Skov's vulnerable throat, but Kavinsky thought this was going to be _boxing_. Instead, Skov rolled fast, locking him down with legs tangled in his and a fist smacking into the side of his face once, then twice, then a third time before Kavinsky got his arms up to block and curled into himself.

Blood spattered the dirt. Kavinsky breathed raggedly and jammed an elbow into Skov's throat, knocking him back. He twisted his hips and drove a knee into Skov's spine. The pair bit and snarled and hit in the dirt. Skov's pulse pounded in his ears, his tongue, his dick; Kavinsky landed a brutal hook on his cheekbone and he felt skin split. The gush of it painted them both. He saw his blood on Kavinsky's mouth and slammed his forehead into the other boy's face. 

"Jesus fuck," Jiang said from behind them.

"He'll tire himself out eventually," Prokopenko replied.

He let Kavinsky get him on his back, took a few hard hits at the side of his body—it felt _good_ —before he realized his mistake. Kavinsky grinned and suddenly there were hands around his neck under his jaw, forearms tucked against his collarbones, Kavinsky folding his whole body in tight and thrumming against him. He flailed, striking and scratching as his vision went patchy. Of course he'd go for the blood supply before the air supply, of _fucking course_ —

Kavinsky ground against him, pushing an unmistakable hard-on into his thigh. He was going to black out. He fumbled his hands between their bodies and got a firm grip of that erection. Kavinsky's hold tightened. He shook, rolled his eyes back to see Prokopenko sipping from the whiskey bottle, disinterested. Jiang was watching more avidly, but with a sick sort of fascination. No one was going to stop this. He moaned wheezing and weak in the back of his throat and lost consciousness like falling asleep.

He came to with his face in the dirt and his pants around his ankles. He laughed, getting his knees under him and burying his face in the crook of his arm. His whole body throbbed, hot and sore. Kavinsky was panting. He draped himself over Skov's back and made a fist in his hair. The crackling burn in his scalp was delightful. "Don't pussy out now," Skov snarled.

Kavinsky's free hand spread him, and he shuddered when the other boy spit and pushed it in with two cursory fingers. He made a concentrated effort to relax, to breathe, and then he was groaning into his arm as Kavinsky worked his cock into him. It was difficult going, with frequent pauses for Kavinsky to tuck bloodied fingers into his mouth and draw them out to smear more spit on himself and Skov. It hurt. Skov grunted and shivered and got his own cock in his hand to stroke himself through it.

He came first, took two more slow thrusts before reaching back to slam his fist into Kavinsky's hip joint. Kavinsky choked on a shout and curled over him. His movements went jerky. Skov felt the hot spill of him a moment later, skinned his lips back from his teeth at the delicate draw out of his body.

They separated, collapsed next to one another. Skov spared a look at their audience. Jiang had moved himself out of Prokopenko's reach, though his sweatpants did nothing to hide his appreciation for the show; Prokopenko looked supremely unruffled. This was the reason he'd come tonight, almost more than curiosity. Because Swan hadn't touched him, and Skov didn't know how to _make_ him—but maybe returning covered in spit and semen and bruises would do the trick. He smirked, upside down. Prokopenko cocked an eyebrow and sauntered over, poured a mouthful of the whiskey-and-cocaine cocktail into his waiting lips.

"For the record, that freaked me the fuck out," Jiang said.  

Proko laughed. "No taste for rough trade? We just took turns on you last week until you cried again, asshole."

"That wasn't—" Jiang started.

"Shut up, I can see your dick right now," Kavinsky cut him off. He heaved himself up onto his hands and knees. Staggered to standing. He reached out a hand to Skov, wavered, and fell on his ass.

Skov cracked up, hurting from head to toe but it was perfect, wonderful. Prokopenko's hands under his elbows drew him to his feet but it was Jiang who helped him pull his pants up. Kavinsky crawled to the cars and soon the four of them were piled together in a huddle against the side of the Supra.

"I have a concussion," Kavinsky said finally.

"That's just how your pupils always look," Prokopenko joked, but he took his chin in his hand, tilting his head this way and that.

"That was—" Skov said quietly to Jiang, who was still frowning. "It was the thing I asked for it to be."

"Okay," Jiang said. He chewed his thumbnail. His gaze was far away.

Skov let it go. There would be time to discuss it later, he suspected. Kavinsky's smirk, spreading his ruined raw lips, told him he'd passed the test. He had the suspicion that he'd won more than respect—and that Kavinsky knew he'd let him win.

  **3.**

 

Swan closed his book at the key scraping in the lock to their dorm room. Half-past one in the morning, which was frankly earlier than he'd expected, given that Skov had left at ten with a blistering smile on his face, the one that said _I am about to fuck someone's day so bad_. Swan liked that smile. The door opened; his friend stumbled in, one hand clinging to the doorframe, laughing under his breath. He reeked of booze and copper and sweat.

The fantastic bruising climbing from the palm-prints wrapped around Skov's throat to bridge his split cheek and blackened eyes had Swan's lips curling back in a burst of disgust and rage. He threw his book down and got to his feet before Skov ate carpet, catching him around the waist with one strong arm and tossing him onto the bed nearest the door. Skov yelped like that hurt, face down and twisting to right himself. The cloud of his white-blonde dye job was clumped with blood and his shirt rode up—

Swan took a breath and turned his back, staring out into the empty hall, because if he looked at the fingerprints spanning the bared small of Skov's back he might lose it. He was going to find Joseph Kavinsky and peel his skin off in front of his fucking pets. Skov had been beat to shit and he stank like other men, and Swan hated it with the fiercest passion he'd ever felt.

"No, no," Skov muttered. A hand landed heavy on the nape of his neck and an arm came around his waist. "Don't be like that."

"He—" Swan heard his own voice as if from a distance, a black snarl.

"It's fine," Skov said.

Swan shoved him. Skov tripped over himself and landed in a tumble against the end of the bed, one arm on it and the other on the floor. Swan shut the door and stood over him, breathing hard, hands shaking. "Bathroom. We're cleaning this up."

Skov glanced up at him, pale and bright with his own blood dried in rusty patches all over his pants. He looked like he'd just heard the best joke ever told, smiling wicked and inviting. His phone buzzed and he took it out of his pocket. Shock wiped that expression and Swan yanked the phone out of his hand as he blurted, " _Don't_ \--"

The photo was grainy and the number unsaved in Skov's contacts. Swan focused on that first, prickling cold and miserable, then second on the clear and impossible shot of Skov's hair spilled over his own arm, one hand scrabbling in the dirt, his pants around his knees, blue-tinged light on his bare back and _Joseph motherfucking Kavinsky's_ torso, his hips tight up against Skov's ass. He threw the phone overhand at the wall and it shattered.

He snared one hand in that filthy mop of hair and another around the back of Skov's neck, dragged him halfway to the bathroom kicking and struggling before the black spots in his vision cleared out. He didn't pause.

"Where's he at," Swan ground out.

"Swan, _Swan_ ," Skov gasped. He looked worse in the harsh light of the bathroom.

"I said, where is that fucking—"

"He didn't hurt me," Skov said, incongruous.

Swan stared.

"Okay, he didn't overstep." Swan let go of him and Skov stood up, using the sink to boost himself to his feet. Skov swallowed, visible, ducked his chin for a moment as if deciding, and then—"Do you like it?"

Swan punched the mirror, because it was safer. It spiderwebbed but held.

Skov flinched. "Wait," he said and yanked his shirt off one-handed while he undid his pants clumsily with the other. He was vulnerable and abruptly naked. The smell of him was stronger in the closed space. "Look, see, I'm in one piece."

"Put your clothes back on," Swan said.

"No," Skov replied.

Swan shook his head. He wasn't going to do this; he wasn't going to reward whatever this was supposed to be. "Am I supposed to fuck you better, is that it," he said.

"Yeah, actually," Skov said.

"Get in the goddamn shower," he said. "I'm going to take a walk, and then we're going to have a long chat when I get back about how _tired of your shit I am_."

Skov's mouth twisted. His posture changed, a subtle but obvious drawing in on himself. It made Swan abruptly aware of the narrowness of his shoulders and the cut lines of his hips, muscled like a greyhound and meek as one in a split second. For the first time since his friend had come home, the devouring core of his rage flickered.

"Get in the shower," he said again.

"Okay," Skov said. He looked at the broken mirror instead of Swan. He didn't move.

Swan made a strangled, frustrated sound and leaned around him to turn the shower on. He waited for it to warm and then took Skov's shoulders in his hands—bare hot skin, distracting and sweet—and turned him toward it. A little shove made him take a step, but he didn't go further. Swan counted to five internally and then slid his hand back into the messy clumps of Skov's hair. He tugged his head back, leaning forward to make eye contact.

"I told you to do something," he said.

Skov's hum was soft and agreeable.

"Then _do it_ ," Swan said.

The rich intensity of his own command startled him, but this was it: this was the thing he'd half stumbled on before, cleaning Skov's wounds and telling him _sit, stay, be still_. Skov's expression smoothed and he waited for Swan to let go of him to step under the spray. Dirt and blood sluiced off of his chest in a flood.

"I'll be back. If you go to sleep before I get here, I'm going to kick your ass a second time," Swan said.

*

There were two places Swan expected Joseph Kavinsky to be, and he found him at the first: the dorm room he maintained on a technicality with Prokopenko. The door opened after the first knock—more of a hinge-rattling slam of the side of his fist against the wood—and there was the asshole himself. His face was gently mangled: split lip, swollen eye, tender green-yellow shadows marching up his jawbone to his eyebrow.

"Well," he said when Swan didn't speak. "Come in."

Swan didn't miss the slow careful limp Kavinsky was doing his level best to hide. He favored his right side, stiff through his hip and thigh. Another notch eased off of the constricting band of Swan's rage. Skov had given as well as he got, at the least. Kavinsky threw a taunting, poisonous glance over his shoulder, smirk on his mouth, and collapsed face-first onto his bed in a sprawl.

"Here about your boyfriend," Kavinsky prompted.

"He isn't," Swan corrected.

"Bullshit," Kavinsky said.

"He's in the shower," Swan said.

Silence, for a moment, then: "And?"

 _He's mine_ , Swan thought. He didn't speak.

Kavinsky rolled onto his back and spread his arms on the mattress, wounded, incongruously delicate for it. Also, Swan realized abruptly, sober. "Your boy gave me a concussion. Jiang thought I might end up falling asleep and dying."

"Then where is he," Swan said.

"I told them to fuck off," he said.

"Why?"

"I had an inkling you'd need some attention," Kavinsky said.

"You don't know me," he responded, fists tightening by his sides again.

"I _do_ , though, sweetheart." The petname came out nasty and self-righteous. "It upsets you that the dick he took tonight was mine, and that he liked it, and that when you look at him for the next week you're going to see where he let me hurt him."

Swan was on the bed with his forearm up against the column of Kavinsky's throat in a heartbeat. The other boy laughed, strained and choking.

"Fuck you," he said.

"Will it make you feel better?" Kavinsky asked.

"No," Swan said.

Kavinsky grinned. "Come on, let me collect the whole set. Skov's staying, I'll take you for his sake. It's more fun with friends."

"Jesus christ," Swan said.

"Get up here," Kavinsky said, flexing his chin minutely against the pressure of Swan's muscled forearm. "I'm feeling magnanimous."

Swan crawled up onto the bed, thighs bracketing Kavinsky's hips, and considered him. He remained lax and willing, fundamentally small next to Swan's bulk pressing him into the mattress, and Swan opened his pants one-handed. He was half-hard. Kavinsky's eyes tracked down and then his expression shifted.

"Fuck, man, that thing is huge," he said.

Swan couldn't help it; he grinned, measure for measure as unpleasant as Kavinsky's previous high-handed provocation. "I'm going to fuck your mouth, and it's going to hurt," he said.

Kavinsky closed his eyes, blowing a breath like a sigh. Swan knelt up over him. One hand gripped his hair in a tight fist. The other guided his prick between those soft-swollen lips. Kavinsky's brow drew down, breath hitching, but he took it without complaint, mouth slack in invitation and exhaustion. Swan moved with him, a mess of drool and his own precome dripping steadily down Kavinsky's face. The flickering edge of his betrayal and rage cut against the heat of his arousal, stumbling between extremes, but in this moment he appreciated it: the unforgiving bridge of Skov's fists had split these lips and blacked that eye, made a landscape of damage across Kavinsky's face and ribs and the rest of him.

It was like sharing. He felt himself swell thicker with his own ragged pulse at the thought, heard Kavinsky choke off a moan that was half-erotic and half-pathetic, pushed in a little harder to see if his mouth would bleed again. It did. Swan came a moment and a breath later. He shuddered as Kavinsky swallowed him, held himself deep inside for another second, making him wait and take it without resistance, then slipped free.

As he rolled off to the side, Kavinsky laughed.

"Got a whole pack, now," he slurred. "Bunch of fucking animals."

Swan snorted and tucked himself in his pants, wondered if Skov was awake still like he'd told him to be, if he'd know the taste of Kavinsky's spit on someone else's skin clear enough to guess. The room was quiet. Kavinsky reached out and tangled a hand in his shirt. Swan thought he might've been smiling, but no one was going to look, so he could let himself do it.

**Author's Note:**

> Blame [zippkat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zippkat/pseuds/zippkat), who challenged me to write something for the pack that wasn't upsetting. 
> 
> The other subtitle for this fic is, "the solution to all problems is rough sex."


End file.
